Social media for charitable foundations - Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) presentation
1. Social media for foundations
James Grant, Joseph Rowntree Foundation
2. Agenda
1. Introduction to social media
2. How social media can be useful for
foundations
3. Strategy
4. Creating great digital content
5. Top tips and tools
James Grant / james.grant@jrf.org.uk
3. Why does social media exist?
James Grant / james.grant@jrf.org.uk
16. For foundations, what is social media
good for?
Launching/promoting work
Profile and networking
Increasing (traditional) media coverage
Stakeholder mapping and monitoring
Being human
Branding
Transparency
Engaging/mobilising supporters
Increasing audience
Impact analysis
Making more of what you’re already doing
James Grant / james.grant@jrf.org.uk
29. JRF Strategy
Objectives
- increase impact of research in public policy
in order to reduce poverty in UK
- target content to the people it’s intended
for
- increase profile of staff and support them to
develop their professional networks
- protect and strengthen brand
James Grant / james.grant@jrf.org.uk
30. JRF Strategy
Target audience
= policymakers and opinion-formers (MPs,
media, campaigners, practitioners)
Resources
Research reports
Historical archive of research reports
Staff
Brand/reputation
Website
James Grant / james.grant@jrf.org.uk
32. JRF Strategy
Capturing and communicating
• tweet from events (quotes and photos, etc.)
• team effort to favorite/retweet key tweets
(ensures nothing is lost)
• judge who is/isn’t engaging with the content
online
• gather data from tweets, Google Analytics and
anecdotal evidence of impact, circulate
James Grant / james.grant@jrf.org.uk
33. Basics of creating great digital content
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Think digital first
Make it mobile
Be visual
Keep it short
Think carefully about the title
Be interested and interesting
Tell stories
Use video
Capture as you go
James Grant / james.grant@jrf.org.uk
35. The online audience is....
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Busy (drip-feed)
Negotiating a lot of different content
Skimming
Not reading/watching to the end of anything
Not going to work hard to understand what
you mean
• Not coming to you
• Not going to see it the first time you share it
36. How to identify opportunities for
creating great online content
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Keep abreast of current debate / mood
Respond to current debate / mood
Anticipate debate
Recognize a story
37. Top tools and tips…
James Grant / james.grant@jrf.org.uk
Useful to start with why social media exists in the first place
The Internet has made two things possible in new and exciting ways
PUBLISHING and ACCESSING INFORMATION – huge amounts of data and information to be published in a public digital space
COMMUNICATION – for people to connect and communicate with other people regardless of physical location.
A HUGE amount of information became publically available in a relatively short period of time. Amazing possibilities and amazing challenges
One of the challenges was ‘How do you find what you want in a library that has everything?’
SEARCH is the dominant model for navigating the online content and it’s BRILLIANT for some things but in many ways it’s not ideal
it returns millions of unrefined results -information overload
offers the user no indication of whether any one of the 50 million results is any more relevant than any other
this is an incredibly unnatural way for us to find stuff out – you have to know what you’re looking for in the first place (you need to know what it is you don’t know but should) and then you have to actively seek this out
This is the most NATURAL way for us to find things out.
Since time immemorial, INFORMATION has spread from person to person through natural networks – family, friends, neighbours, colleagues.
And these people have provided the natural FILTERS necessary for us to judge what information is relevant and trustworthy.
Social media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn – work in the same way by enabling us to share different kinds of information with those people who naturally fall into different social networks (and for whom it’s most relevant).
Online social networks tend to REFLECT AND EXTEND the social networks we have in the offline world – friends, family, neighbours, colleagues, etc.
So there are different social media tools for our different networks.
Social media has evolved in response to the information overload created by search, to enable us to use our natural filters.
2012
The UK has the second highest proportion of social networkers in the EU.
We LOVE social media here in the UK – most of the UK population uses social media of some kind.
This is all of 37 billion hours the UK spent online in 2012 displayed as a single hour
We’re spending nearly a quarter of our time online on social media.
That’s more time spent using social media than we’re spending doing anything else online.
That’s 6.5 times longer on social media than on email.
And yet most of us would still probably say email is more important Twitter, right... ?
Facebook biggest social network in the world, with over a billion users.
It’s been around for 10 years and 3/4 UK adults use it to keep in touch and share info and links with friends and family.
We generally use Facebook as a closed network to share and discuss photos and updates with our nearest and dearest.
This creates a digital environment that for most of us feels very comfortable and familiar. This is opportunity for foundations to engage supporters on their terms and to exploit people’s closest networks.
Twitter launched in 2006 and originally worked as a way of sharing mobile text messages over the Internet. It has since become one of the ten most visited websites on the Web.
It enables us to share 140-character messages (in the form of tweets) and follow other users whose tweets might be relevant for us. It’s appeal is the brevity of the messages, which enables users to scan lots of content quickly and easily. And because it only displays the most recent tweets, it’s very much about what’s important now.
It has over 200 million active users worldwide (half of whom are use it every day). There are some 15 million active users in the UK. So more than 1 in 5 of us in UK use Twitter.
80 per cent of its UK users use it on a mobile. A very quick, scannable, on-the-go social tool.
LinkedIn has also been around for about 10 years. It works very much like Facebook except it’s designed to work with your professional network.
So not your nearest and dearest but you peers and colleagues (past, present and future).
About 280 million users worldwide, including about 13 million (or 20% of us) in UK
It’s popular because users create a public profile which takes the form of a CV so this is a chance to display our professional experience and achievements.
Very useful for checking people out before meetings or while on the phone to them.-
There’s also Google+
Which offers a lot of what the others offer and in many cases does those things better but because it arrived so late to the party, everyone was already using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for those things and so had no need for Google+.
However, we have to keep it on our radar for now because
Google is all powerful
Google automatically registers everyone with a Google account as a G+ user. Therefore it technically has an enormous number of registered users
But I don’t know anyone who uses it.
Social media started on computers but now all mobile phones are become smartphones, it refers to a bunch of tools which are very much more mobile, working with apps.
This has led to the continued fragmentation of social media.
Before the smartphone, we relied mainly on Facebook to chat and to share photos, videos, news and updates. Facebook tried to be all things to everyone and it didn’t matter how well Facebook did any of these things, it was the tool which everyone used and so we had to use it to.
Now, we have a proliferation of mobile apps designed and built not to try and do everything (badly like Facebook) but to do each one thing well. And to integrate with Facebook, with Twitter, with LinkedIn.
All these tools do something different but they all still need to use the networks we’ve created using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
So Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat rely on our Facebook and Twitter networks to find our friends and peers who are using those tools.
Our uploads to YouTube, SoundCloud and Audioboo embed seamlessly in our posts on Twitter and Facebook so we don’t have to leave Twitter or Facebook to watch the video/listen to the audio.
It’s very fragmented but very integrated.
For Foundations to make use of social media, you need to invest in your main online networks – which are probably Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.
Launching/promoting work
Profile and networking (corporate and staff)
Increasing (trad) media coverage (JRF press releasing less, blogging more
Monitoring and stakeholder mapping
Being human and engaging on terms of audience
Branding
Transparency
Mobilise and engage supporters (provide hashtags for events, retweet key tweets, thank them for tweeting
Impact analysis
Making the most of your resources (what you already do, what you already have) – breathing new life into older content, making more from staff, events, activities
For example, JRF uses Twitter to tweet links to news relevant in the fields it’s interested in (poverty, housing and the ageing population) because this attracts followers who are interested in those issues. JRF is known as an authority in these areas and so Twitter users interested in that trust that the tweets that come from the JRF Twitter account will be worth reading. When JRF has something to say themselves about one of these issues, they’ve got a large and tailer-made audience to work with. And these followers will help share these messages.
Among the followers, there’s MPs, journalists, campaigners, researchers, practitioners...
JRF uses encourages staff to blog frequently about the progress of their work. This does several things
Provides an opportunity to provide more fresh content for the website (which is good for SEO)
Gives JRF a chance to offer up new or relevant content that isn’t a 70 page report, but just a few headline messages in a quick 400 words.
Keeps stakeholders up to date with the work the organisation is doing
Creates opportunities to grow the JRF stakeholder-base
Creates opportunities for JRF to demonstrate that it is in touch with what’s going on and responsive to that
Gives journalists the chance to get quotes for their articles
Asserts JRF staff as experts in their subject, raising their profile
JRF encourages all staff to actively use Twitter. A better networked staff is a better networked Foundation. This gives them a way to promote their work and share their blog posts.
We use the corporate account with the large following to retweet the tweets of individual staff.
This makes the JRF main account more worth following because it’s filtering tweets through one account.
It also helps Twitter users interested in JRF’s work to identify and follow the relevant staff.
We can use blogging in conjunction with more traditional media to communicate our research and influence change. Journalists use blog posts as sources.
This was a timely post on current events.
Which was shared on Twitter by various people
And which was quoted in the Times the next day.
Last year, JRF published some research about flood insurance and how if you live in a poor area you’re more likely to be at risk from flooding.
So, in light of recent events, they’ve been doing lots of tweeting and blogging about what they know about this issue which everyone is talking about.
Lo and behold, Andrew Marr quotes these JRF findings in a recent article in the Daily Mail
Looking at impact analysis
On Friday, JRF launched a new partnership with the Leeds City Region to engage employers and city leaders in discussions about why as a city experiences economic growth, it doesn’t necessarily benefit everyone.
The held a morning conference in Leeds with several speakers. Tweeting was encouraged, delegates were told to use the hashtag #betterjobs, and the JRF staff at the event were tweeting from it too.
By 5pm Friday afternoon, the #betterjobs hashtag had reached over 300,000 Twitter accounts, creating over 4 million impressions.
Establish an ongoing strategy first. This will lay the groundwork for any campaign/project specific strategy you might want to execute.
For both ongoing / campaign strategies start with
Objectives – what do we want to achieve by the end of this? Who is our target audience?
Resources – what have we got to work with in order to achieve this? (assets? including website and followers and email newsletter? Staff? Funding? Events? Written content?)
Tools – which tools are best suited to help us achieve these objectives with these resources
Prioritise – manage expectations – what is the likely impact of this activity? – what do we want to measure in order to report on impact? Are there any risks that need to be taken into consideration?
Then
Agree a plan – make sure everyone knows what’s happening, when and why and who’s doing what. Make sure everything is in place ahead of time (if it’s an event, is there wifi available at the venue? Is everyone clear about what hashtag we’re using? This needs to be on all the pre-event correspondence, starting with the invitation. Is there a speech prepared we could look at beforehand to identify quotes and prepare some tweets in advance?)
Capture and communicate throughout
Debrief – what worked / didn’t work? Why? What do we need to do differently / what do we need to repeat? Share
JRF strategy (ongoing)Objectives- increasing the impact of our research in public policy and reducing poverty in the UK- targeting content to the people it’s intended for- increasing profile of staff and developing their professional networks- strengthening brand
target audience is mainly policymakers and opinion-formers, e.g. MPs, the media, campaign groups and practitioners etc.
Resources
- Archive of high quality research
Staff
Brand/reputation
Website
Content/tools
The product is research, always presented at its most basic in the form of a long report published on website
Often there are just a handful of key headline messages from any given research report, which can be distilled shared using social media
Most of JRF’s SM resources at the moment go into blogging and Twitter because those are the things that we’ve found best help our content noticed by the people who can make the changes we want.
JRF uses blogs as a quick, accessible and sharable medium to communicate key messages from research
JRF uses the networks of each of its staff (as well as the corporate Twitter following) to help get these blog posts shared. They’re also published on the JRF Facebook page, and linked to in email newsletters.
The team knows who is responsible for what
For more campaign or project specific activity, we’ll look at the objectives of the campaign, the target audience, what content we have to work. Quite often there’s a launch event or some media coverage, in which case we can arrange to use social media to make the most of that, tweeting from the event, sharing links to the media coverage
In terms of capturing and communicating
We tweet from events using a hashtag and encourage supporters to do the same
Staff at the event will tweet quotes, photos, etc.
the whole team uses Twitter and favorites/retweets key tweets to ensure nothing is lost – this is gives us a good idea of who is engaging with the content online (and enables us to think about anyone who isn’t)
We use Google Analytics to monitor how much traffic a blog post gets and where that traffic is coming from
We gather the data from tweets, analytics, etc. as well as any anecdotal evidence of impact and circulate this. From this we’re able to agree what worked and what didn’t
JRF strategy (ongoing)Objectives- increasing the impact of our research in public policy and reducing poverty in the UK- targeting content to the people it’s intended for- increasing profile of staff and developing their professional networks- strengthening brand
target audience is mainly policymakers and opinion-formers, e.g. MPs, the media, campaign groups and practitioners etc.
Resources
- Archive of high quality research
Staff
Brand/reputation
Website
Content/tools
The product is research, always presented at its most basic in the form of a long report published on website
Often there are just a handful of key headline messages from any given research report, which can be distilled shared using social media
Most of JRF’s SM resources at the moment go into blogging and Twitter because those are the things that we’ve found best help our content noticed by the people who can make the changes we want.
JRF uses blogs as a quick, accessible and sharable medium to communicate key messages from research
JRF uses the networks of each of its staff (as well as the corporate Twitter following) to help get these blog posts shared. They’re also published on the JRF Facebook page, and linked to in email newsletters.
The team knows who is responsible for what
For more campaign or project specific activity, we’ll look at the objectives of the campaign, the target audience, what content we have to work. Quite often there’s a launch event or some media coverage, in which case we can arrange to use social media to make the most of that, tweeting from the event, sharing links to the media coverage
In terms of capturing and communicating
We tweet from events using a hashtag and encourage supporters to do the same
Staff at the event will tweet quotes, photos, etc.
the whole team uses Twitter and favorites/retweets key tweets to ensure nothing is lost – this is gives us a good idea of who is engaging with the content online (and enables us to think about anyone who isn’t)
We use Google Analytics to monitor how much traffic a blog post gets and where that traffic is coming from
We gather the data from tweets, analytics, etc. as well as any anecdotal evidence of impact and circulate this. From this we’re able to agree what worked and what didn’t
JRF strategy (ongoing)Objectives- increasing the impact of our research in public policy and reducing poverty in the UK- targeting content to the people it’s intended for- increasing profile of staff and developing their professional networks- strengthening brand
target audience is mainly policymakers and opinion-formers, e.g. MPs, the media, campaign groups and practitioners etc.
Resources
- Archive of high quality research
Staff
Brand/reputation
Website
Content/tools
The product is research, always presented at its most basic in the form of a long report published on website
Often there are just a handful of key headline messages from any given research report, which can be distilled shared using social media
Most of JRF’s SM resources at the moment go into blogging and Twitter because those are the things that we’ve found best help our content noticed by the people who can make the changes we want.
JRF uses blogs as a quick, accessible and sharable medium to communicate key messages from research
JRF uses the networks of each of its staff (as well as the corporate Twitter following) to help get these blog posts shared. They’re also published on the JRF Facebook page, and linked to in email newsletters.
The team knows who is responsible for what
For more campaign or project specific activity, we’ll look at the objectives of the campaign, the target audience, what content we have to work. Quite often there’s a launch event or some media coverage, in which case we can arrange to use social media to make the most of that, tweeting from the event, sharing links to the media coverage
In terms of capturing and communicating
We tweet from events using a hashtag and encourage supporters to do the same
Staff at the event will tweet quotes, photos, etc.
the whole team uses Twitter and favorites/retweets key tweets to ensure nothing is lost – this is gives us a good idea of who is engaging with the content online (and enables us to think about anyone who isn’t)
We use Google Analytics to monitor how much traffic a blog post gets and where that traffic is coming from
We gather the data from tweets, analytics, etc. as well as any anecdotal evidence of impact and circulate this. From this we’re able to agree what worked and what didn’t
JRF strategy (ongoing)Objectives- increasing the impact of our research in public policy and reducing poverty in the UK- targeting content to the people it’s intended for- increasing profile of staff and developing their professional networks- strengthening brand
target audience is mainly policymakers and opinion-formers, e.g. MPs, the media, campaign groups and practitioners etc.
Resources
- Archive of high quality research
Staff
Brand/reputation
Website
Content/tools
The product is research, always presented at its most basic in the form of a long report published on website
Often there are just a handful of key headline messages from any given research report, which can be distilled shared using social media
Most of JRF’s SM resources at the moment go into blogging and Twitter because those are the things that we’ve found best help our content noticed by the people who can make the changes we want.
JRF uses blogs as a quick, accessible and sharable medium to communicate key messages from research
JRF uses the networks of each of its staff (as well as the corporate Twitter following) to help get these blog posts shared. They’re also published on the JRF Facebook page, and linked to in email newsletters.
The team knows who is responsible for what
For more campaign or project specific activity, we’ll look at the objectives of the campaign, the target audience, what content we have to work. Quite often there’s a launch event or some media coverage, in which case we can arrange to use social media to make the most of that, tweeting from the event, sharing links to the media coverage
In terms of capturing and communicating
We tweet from events using a hashtag and encourage supporters to do the same
Staff at the event will tweet quotes, photos, etc.
the whole team uses Twitter and favorites/retweets key tweets to ensure nothing is lost – this is gives us a good idea of who is engaging with the content online (and enables us to think about anyone who isn’t)
We use Google Analytics to monitor how much traffic a blog post gets and where that traffic is coming from
We gather the data from tweets, analytics, etc. as well as any anecdotal evidence of impact and circulate this. From this we’re able to agree what worked and what didn’t
Think about digital comms from the outset and create content that is versatile
Think about mobile
Be visual
Length – edit ruthlessly
Titles – what to consider when composing a title
Capture as you go (photographs, tweets, video, audio, quotes, blog)
Be interested and interesting. Relate your content to what’s going on (TV, media, etc.) Anticipate debate and get involved.
Tell stories
(Video)
Creating content that works on the Internet is very different from creating content that works offline. There’s no such thing as a captive audience online.
Traditionally, media was curated for us by editors and presented to us to consume how those editors wanted us to consume it. When we bought a newspaper all we could do was read what was in that newspaper. Then throw it out.
We have much greater access to knowledge and information online and we’re using social media to help refine it all, filter it based on our different networks. We’re curating our own media. Newspapers are still producing articles but we’re able to follow different sections of different newspapers
We’re so much more connected to stuff going outside of our immediate surroundings. In fact we’ve never had so many demands on our attention! At any given moment I might be simultaneously
Reading an email
Looking at Twitter
Googling something
Meanwhile, someone texts me or the phone rings
A colleague speaks to me
I see an advert outside cos I’m on a train so I’m also half listening to some audio on headphones
We multitask, using different combinations of tools to keep up with what’s relevant to us personally.
We have more distractions and a shorter attention span. In fact, this kind of personalised news feed is what we’re coming to expect. We’re less inclined to work to find stuff out because the expectation is, ‘if it’s relevant to me, I’ll see it shared by someone I know’.
Since there is no captive audience anymore, we as content creators have to show a great deal of consideration for the online audience. The online audience is:
Busy – we don’t have time to read long pieces of text. Drip feed messages
Negotiating a lot of different content – know what you want to communicate and be clear and concise when you say it
Skimming – design your content so it’s obvious what it’s about and who will be interested
Not reading/watching to the end of anything – if you’ve got something to say, you need to say it at the start
Not going to work hard to understand what you mean – online messages must be communicated simply. If you want to communicate anything in any depth you first have generate interest.
Not coming to you – you need to share your content in the online spaces your audience occupies. This is not on your website!
Not going to see it the first time you share it (some will but most won’t – we’re not all online at the same time) so share your content more than once – drip feed
Keep abreast of current debate. Use Twitter to follow others operating in your field and note what most of them are tweeting about. This will give you an idea of what’s on their radar, their priorities. This may not always be what you expect – internal organisational priorities are not always the same what’s going on externally.
Respond to current debate, taking account of the priorities of those in your network – this will demonstrate that you’re in touch with your online audience
Anticipate debate (and engage with it) – relevant TV programmes, events, policy changes, media events, other developments
Recognize a story